I NTERNATIONAL Venezuela. A fifth arbitrator was to be appointed by these four, possession of all the other channels to the north of the or in the event of their failure to agree, by the king of Sweden Strait of Fuca, together with the island of San Juan and and Norway. The four arbitrators agreed to appoint as their colleague M. de Martens, privy councillor and member of the several small islets. of Foreign Affairs in Russia. Lord Hersphell having The facts of the territorial dispute between Great Britain Ministry died in March 1899, the Lord Chief-Justice of England, Lord and the Republic of Venezuela with regard to British Guiana Russell of Killowen, was appointed in his place. The court so —dating back to 1841 and not settled until 1899 are constituted assembled in Paris in June 1899. On 3rd October the arbitrators published their award. By it Venezuela obtained the as follows:— district of Barima as far as Point Playa, and a strip of country The British claimed title through the Dutch, the Venezuelans between the Wenamu and Cuyuni rivers ; elsewhere the new claimed title through Spain. The Dutch in the course of their boundary coincided with the Schomburgk line. Barima, which war of independence had established settlements is a district strategically important to Venezuela, but otherwise Venezuela, along the coast of Guiana, of which the most im- of little value, had been offered to her by the British Government portant was Kijkoveral, situated at the point where at least three times in the prolonged course of the negotiation. the Cuyuni, the Massaruni, and the Essequibo rivers unite. In The free navigation of the rivers Amakuru and Barima was 1648, by the treaty of Munster, they were confirmed in the secured to Great Britain, which had every reason to be satisfied possession of the territory which they then held. Subsequently with the result. they extended their posts along the coast as far as the mouth of Of disputes with regard to fisheries, the two most imthe Amakuru, and inland along the courses of the three rivers above named. The British claimed that their rights extended to portant in recent times are the Newfoundland and the the whole Cuyuni basin, but the boundary actually insisted upon Bering Sea cases. The Newfoundland disouad was a line, laid out by Sir Robert Schomburgk in 1840, and ' known as the Schomburgk line, which included the district of pute is a very old one, and is not yet closed. ^^J By the treaty of Utrecht of 1713 a right was p^ sbery^ Barima and so much of the basin of the Cuyuni as lies to the west of the main stream. This claim was based upon Dutch occupa- reserved to French subjects to catch fish and to tion, actual or constructive, of territory previously unoccupied. dry them on that part of Newfoundland which stretches The Venezuelans claimed the whole country as far as the Esse- from Cape Bonavista to the northern point of the island, quibo, that is to say, more than half of the colony of British Guiana, as shown on the latest maps. They alleged that the and from thence coming down by the western side reaches bull of Alexander VI. of 1493 had granted to Spain all territory as far as Cape Riche. By the treaty of Versailles of 1783 that she might discover west of a line drawn 100 leagues west of France renounced the fishery from Bonavista to Cape the Azores, and that at the date of the bull the papacy was St. John on the east coast, receiving in return extended universally recognized as a competent international authority, particularly in matters affecting territory reclaimed from the rights upon the west coast as far as Cape Ray. Neither heathen. They further alleged that the Spaniards had discovered treaty purported to grant exclusive right, but there was Guiana, and had thus obtained, even without the bull, an annexed to the treaty of Versailles a declaration to the inchoate title, which they had perfected by exploration and acts effect that “His Britannic Majesty will take the most of sovereignty. In 1850 it was arranged between the two Governments that positive measures for preventing his subjects from inneither should enter into or encroach upon the territory in dis- terrupting in any manner by their competition the fishery pute ; but subsequently the Venezuelans disregarded this arrange- of the French during the temporary exercise of it which is ment, and in 1883-84 made grants and concessions in the territory granted to them upon the coasts of the island of Newclaimed by the British. In November 1886 the British Government' issued a notice to the effect that these concessions were foundland, and he will for this purpose cause the fixed invalid ; and in consequence of this notice, and of other differ- settlements which shall be formed there to be removed.” ences concerning the proposed erection of a lighthouse upon Upon this declaration the French founded a claim to Barima Point, the Venezuelan Government in 1887 broke off diplomatic relations. In 1890 they suggested arbitration, which exclusive fishing rights within the limits named. Various Great Britain refused on the ground that, as regarded the terri- conventions were entered into with a view to defining tory comprised within the Schomburgk line, the British title was these rights in 1854, 1884, and 1885, but they remained clear and there was nothing to arbitrate about. In July 1895 inoperative, the consent of the Newfoundland Legislature Mr Secretary Olney, on behalf of the United States, addressed a —to which they were made subject—having been hitherto lengthy despatch to the British Government, urging that the refusal to arbitrate should be reconsidered, and intimating that refused. Meanwhile the French Government granted a any attempt to put hostile pressure upon Venezuela would be bounty to the French fishermen which enabled them to considered by his Government as an infringement of the Monroe undersell the colonists. In 1887 the Newfoundland Legisdoctrine. To this Lord Salisbury replied that Great Britain could lature passed an Act forbidding the sale of bait, which not consent to go to arbitration in respect of territory actually settled and occupied by British subjects. On 17th December struck a severe blow at the French industry. This was President Cleveland, in his message to Congress, announced that not, however, the whole cause of difference between Great Great Britain having refused arbitration, he intended to appoint Britain and France. At the date of the treaty of Utrecht, a commission which should report upon the respective rights of and for more than a century afterwards, the French fished the parties, and he added : “ When such report is made and accepted, it will, in my opinion, be the duty of the United States in this region almost entirely for cod, but subsequently to resist by every means in its power, as a wilful aggression upon they also fished there for lobsters, and about the year 1886 its rights and interests, the appropriation by Great Britain of any they erected factories for “tinning” or “canning” lobsters lands, or the exercise of any governmental jurisdiction over any at Port au Choix on the north-west coast of the island. territory, which, after investigation, we shall have determined of right to belong to Venezuela.” The effect of this message was to This, it was contended, was not within the treaty, which call forth in the United States a great display of warlike en- only contemplated cod fishing, and gave no landing rights thusiasm, and to occasion a fall in the value of American except in respect of that species of fish. Moreover, the securities amounting to $400,000,000. In England it was received with considerable astonishment but without active resent- colonial fishermen had, prior to 1886, erected lobster ment, the public mind being almost immediately diverted to the factories of their own on that part of the coast which is troubles arising out of Dr Jameson’s raid into the Transvaal. In known as “the French shore,” so that their trade was January 1896 the United States appointed their commission, and directly interfered with by the factories at Port au Choix. invited the British Government to furnish a statement of their case. The British Government declined to recognize the juris- Mutual protests and remonstrances ensued, each party diction of this commission. Fresh negotiations were then entered appealing to their respective governments to expel the into for arbitration, on the understanding that the rights of intruders. At length, in March 1891, a treaty was signed Great Britain in the settled territory should be protected. In between Great Britain and France by which the two February 1897 a treaty was signed at Washington between Great Britain and Venezuela, in which four arbitrators were named, nations agreed to refer the lobster dispute to a tribunal viz., Lord Herschell and Sir Richard Henn Collins on behalf of composed of three jurists named by the two countries in Great Britain, and Chief-Justice Fuller and Mr Justice Brewer, common, and four delegates, two from each country, who both of the Supreme Court of the United States, on behalf of were to act as intermediaries between their respective 558
ARBITRATION,
